What happens in a criminal trial? 2:01

The girl was allegedly attacked at Aldershot Reserve.Source:News Corp Australia

VICTORIA’S Premier and Attorney General are set to meet the family of a 14 year-old girl allegedly raped in Geelong after they today called for changes to the legal system to protect assaulted children in court.

The parents said they had been warned their daughter would be “brutalised” in the witness stand, one reason the vast majority of rape reports do not reach court in Victoria.

The girl was allegedly raped in 2015 by three men aged 30, 29 and 21, who were committed to stand trial on multiple charges of rape but the case was withdrawn in February.

The parents said they decided to discontinue the Supreme Court trial due to fears their daughter would be further damaged by cross examination for defendants Kevin, Allan and Brodie Wild.

The teen’s mother said her daughter feared the trauma of being cross-examined, after the distress caused by the public airing of some details. “The media reported on extraordinary detail and that was harrowing. She was re-victimised to the point where she couldn’t go to school,” her mother told ABC radio.

The mother suggested such cases be heard by a panel of judges, instead of juries, to avoid unconscious prejudice and put the focus more on the law. She said her daughter was concerned the system was stopping other victims from seeking justice.

“Her big thing is that there are other girls out there that have suffered rapes and sexual assaults that aren’t coming forward,” the mother told 3AW.

Premier Daniel Andrews said he and Attorney-General Martin Pakula would meet the family, possibly as soon as this week.

The girl was allegedly attacked at Aldershot Reserve.Source:News Corp Australia

“If there are things we can change, if there are learnings that we can glean from the tragedy of this case, then we will make those changes,” Mr Andrews said.

But they still have to be cross-examined and Mr Pakula said it would be hard to envision a system where a defendant could not test evidence. He also was wary of the idea of more suppression orders.

“However as I say, I’d be more than happy to meet with the family and ascertain exactly what elements of the reporting of the reporting caused distress and see whether or not there are options for reform,” he said.

According to newspaper reports, the girl, now 16, said not enough victims came forward to and tell the police about their experiences “because of how pointless it seems to be”.

“I hope that one day very soon this changes, so what happened to me never happens to another girl,” she said.

The girl would have had to endure intense questioning by barristers for each of the three accused men.

This would have meant three to five days in the stand. The parents said they had been warned by psychologists and senior legal advisers of the potentially extremely harsh impact of such cross-examination on a child.

When the Supreme Court trial was dropped last month the girl’s elder sister said: “The prosecution dropped the case at the request of my sister. My sister is traumatised by what happened and would have had to relive it again on the stand, knowing every word would be scrutinised and held against her. She was 14 at the time and this has scarred her deeply.”

At the committal hearing the defendants argued the case against them was speculative based on the uncertainty of the sequence of events and the “girl’s memory”, however Magistrate Belinda Wallington found the evidence against the three men sufficient that it could support convictions.

According to the Centre Against Sexual Assault, girls between the ages of 10 and 14 are the greatest proportion of victim/survivors of sexual violence (based on police data).

The parents believe better protection for child sexual assault victims will help give others the confidence to come forward to police and fight for convictions.

As well as having to make the painful decision to drop the trial, the family has had to endure reports of the defendants allegedly attempting to profit from their story, by having an intermediary approach The Geelong Advertiser asking for $250,000 for interviews.